Caesar’s Star

I received some correspondence recently from an anonymous writer who was discussing the length of Nibiru’s orbit with respect to the Babylonian Sar (1). In his/her email, Caesar’s comet came up – an event which is said to have taken place in 44 BCE, shortly after the assassination of the Roman dictator, Julius Caesar. The appearance of this star, thought to be a very bright, daytime comet (indeed, possibly the brightest comet in all recorded history), was recorded by the Romans and the Chinese – although there are actually very few descriptions of such a remarkable comet at the time it took place, which has led some scholars to doubt that this was really an historical event (2). it is said to have appeared for about 7 days, and may have had a magnitude as high as -4, similar to Venus at its brightest. This comet, if such it was, is not a short-period comet, and may have either disintegrated during its perihelion passage, or returned back to the outer solar system (at which point it may be about 800 AU away by now.

“Modern studies of records of Roman and Chinese stargazers place this great comet in the constellations Gemini and Auriga in May, where it reached a brilliant magnitude -3 as it passed the Sun. The comet then moved northward and faded to magnitude +5 by early July. It suddenly brightened again, perhaps as material was ejected from the nucleus and set aglow by the Sun. By mid-July, during Caesar’s games, the comet shone at magnitude -4 to -5 in Cassiopeia, as bright as the planet Venus and possibly visible in the daylight, making it one of the brightest comets in recorded history.” (3)

The discussion or this object as a flaming star is of some interest. The star/comet became a symbol for the deification of Julius by his successor, Augustus. A temple was built featuring a huge statue of Julius Caesar whose forehead was emblazoned with a flaming star. Here’s what the Roman poet Ovid had to say about it, some time later during the reign of Augustus:

“To make that soul a star that burns forever
Above the Forum and the gates of Rome” (4)

and

“Then Jupiter, the Father, spoke…“Take up Caesar’s spirit from his murdered corpse, and change it into a star, so that the deified Julius may always look down from his high temple on our Capitol and forum.” He had barely finished, when gentle Venus stood in the midst of the Senate, seen by no one, and took up the newly freed spirit of her Caesar from his body, and preventing it from vanishing into the air, carried it towards the glorious stars. As she carried it, she felt it glow and take fire, and loosed it from her breast: it climbed higher than the moon, and drawing behind it a fiery tail, shone as a star.” (5)

The deification of Julius through the incorporation of this flaming 8-rayed star was featured on a famous coin, also minted during Augustus’ reign, c.19 BCE (5). I’ve had a long-time interest in whether there was a sighting of an anomalous star during the Graeco-Roman era. This stems from Zecharia Sitchin’s initial assertion that his proposed Planet X body Nibiru appeared in the skies in 3760 BCE, and had a 3600 year orbit (the Babylonian sar spoken of above). Such a situation would place the next historical return of this planet around 160 BCE, during the period of history when there was a much-anticipated return of a messiah.

I’ve speculated in the past that such an occurrence may have been connected to the alleged ‘red Sirius’ anomaly, of the same era (6). In other words, the anomalous appearance of a red Sirius in the Graeco-Roman period, which has been described by Ptolemy and Seneca. Unconvincing explanations for this anomaly (Sirius is self-evidently white) have been put forward in several occasions (7,8).

The various descriptions of a red Sirius took place over a long period of time. I wonder whether the descriptions of this ‘burning’, ‘fiery’ Caesar’s Star of 44 BCE might fall into a similar category? On the face of it, the simplest explanation for the appearance of this bright star is that its was a transient, long-period comet which disintegrated during perihelion. But, just possibly, it was a misidentified phenomenon which related to something else entirely.

3 thoughts on “Caesar’s Star”

I found this post particularly interesting because the rule of the Caesar’s has always been my favorite time period. I hadn’t thought that Caesar’s Star might be something other than a comet. Are you thinking it might have been your Dark Star?

My thought is could it have been another planet similar in size to Venus that then was slung by Jupiter out of the solar system?
Such a body would have huge ramifications in the outer solar system unless it was not in a conflicting angle of orbit to the other planets.
Then there is the problem of where would it have actually originated from?
Would it have a very dense atmosphere? Such as might be possible if it was originated from a dark star’s surface.
Then how would such a planet come about?
IF it left the solar system, would it leave a hole in the asteroid belt beyond Neptune?
I agree that such an event may have occurred to form Venus. But the details of such an event occurring within historical (meaning the last 25,000 years) times does not seem probable. Yet the idea of a disintegrating dark star does appeal to me as a source of most of the debris in the solar system. Meaning satellites around the gas giants, Earth, Venus, Mars, Mercury and possibly some planet nine.
Theory on people smarter me is that it is a Neptune sized object. But that concludes that it might be a gas giant. I suggest it is more likely an Earth substance object similar to Venus only 2-3 times the size of Venus and extremely dense. If that is the case, it is likely surrounded by an ocean that may or may not be liquid depending on the heat source of the core. Which may make it virtually invisible to an infrared telescope. Especially if you have a dense nitrogen atmosphere with liquid oceans on the surface. That would imply a hot core keeping the oceans liquid.
It also implies a gravity heavy enough to be detectable.
I do not blame astronomers for going for a gas giant object. It just does not make a lot of sense that we would not see a gas giant. But it makes a lot of sense if it is a solid iron/nickel core object 1.5 to 3 times the size of the Earth. Such an object might have multiple moons around it. Simply because it is so close to a large amount of debris.

Perhaps there are a great number of planets out there. Consider this, first mooted in 2005:

“The oligarch theory of planet formation states that there were hundreds of planet-sized objects, known as oligarchs, in the early stages of the Solar System’s evolution. In 2005, astronomer Eugene Chiang speculated that although some of these oligarchs became the planets we know today, most would have been flung outward by gravitational interactions. Some may have escaped the Solar System altogether to become free-floating planets, whereas others would be orbiting in a halo around the Solar System, with orbital periods of millions of years. This halo would lie at between 1,000 and 10,000 AU from the Sun, or between a third and a thirtieth the distance to the Oort cloud.”